


The Rose Killer

by sockarooni



Category: Homestuck
Genre: And we need to stop that, F/M, Mostly Platonic, Murder Mystery, People are being murdered
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockarooni/pseuds/sockarooni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Roxy Lalonde, and I can see ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first fic so don't be too harsh on me! It is heavily based on Murdered: Soul Suspect, because who doesn't like a good murder mystery now and then. There won't be much shipping in this, heh. Who can find the time for make outs when theres murder afoot!?

          The town of Salem, Massachusetts always seems gray. You’d think I’m joking, but I’m not. The people, the buildings, the trees, the sky, the birds; they all seem gray. It’s probably because the town is so sleepy. We rarely ever get tourists. Why would anybody want to come here, anyways? To go see some old gravestones and hear a lecture about burned witches? Yeah, no. Nobody ever comes to Salem. It even works the other way around, too. Not many people leave. You’re born here, you grow up here, you live here, you die here. Eventually, the town just swallows you up and you stop noticing. I guess it makes sense that such a creepy town has such a creepy vibe.

          My mother’s mother moved here when she was twenty five, to be with her spouse. Sure, it’s romantic, but I can’t help but resenting her. She’s the one who condemned me to live here, in the creepiest town in the nation. It was a stupid move, on her part. She knew our family was different. She knew what we could do, yet she chose to move to graveyard central. She was either incredibly stupid, or incredibly brave.

          My name is Roxy Lalonde, and I can see ghosts.


	2. My Mother Went Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jazz hands

          I picked up the newspaper on my mother’s desk. The headline read, **_“ROSE KILLER TAKES ANOTHER VICTIM: DETECTIVE DIRK STRIDER.”_** I bit my lip, brows furrowing, and read through the rest of the article.

_“The mysterious Rose Killer has struck again, this time, hitting the police department. Local detective, Dirk Strider, was found dead in an alley. A small rose was scratched into his wrist with a knife, marking him as a sure victim of the Rose Killer. Strider was 24 at the age of his death. Examinations revealed that the detective suffered from multiple minor bone fractures, presumably from falling out a window. The victim seemed to survive falling from a second story building, but unfortunately, he was then shot six times. “The six bullet wounds are surely what did him in,” local medical examiner, Jade Harley, states. “The killer managed to shoot him right through his spine and one of his lungs. Those are super critical shots. His spine was fractured in two places and his left lung was punctured. On top of that, he suffered a major amount of blood loss. Even if he had gotten to the hospital, there would've really been nothing we could’ve done for him,” Harley stated. Detective Strider had two older brothers. The eldest, Broseph ‘Bro’ Strider, is already deceased. Dave Strider, who also works with the police force, is Strider’s only alive relation. Strider is to be buried in Ashen Sanctuary Cemetery this Friday, April 13th.”_

          Well, fuck. I put down the newspaper and continued to root through my mother’s desk. Well, not her entire desk. I've stayed far away from her knitting supplies, and those old family photo albums were still covered in dust. The things I had touched, however, was all her evidence on the Rose Killer. My mother had worked with the police station as kind of a free lance job, so she had a lot of evidence laying around the house. You know, stuff like documents, pictures, autopsy results. This killer was good at what he did. Apparently he never left any evidence, and nobody but his victims ever saw him. The only way the police were able to identify the crimes as serial murders was because of the Rose Killer’s symbol, a small rose. Yeah, that’s why he’s called the _Rose_ Killer, Sherlock.

          As I looked over the pictures and documents, a sudden chill doused me, as if somebody had poured a whole fuckton of ice cold booze down my back. Fuck. I convulsed, backing up and stumbling about. I tripped over a waste paper basket, almost falling over. I probably looked pretty damn drunk. Finally, I had had enough.

          “Aurgh, **GET _OUT!_** _”_ I screamed at the top of my lungs. With one last convulsion, I shoved the possessor out of my body. A translucent, blue, figure appeared in front of me. He was tall, about 6 feet. He looked around, evidently a little shocked that his possession had malfunctioned.

          “ _Don’t_ try to do that again,” I huffed and turned back to my mother’s desk. “I can’t stand getting possessed,” I mumbled under my breath, ignoring the ghost’s presence.

          “Well shit, sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. He paused, spinning around to look at me. “Wait,” he took a step forward tentatively, as if I was the one who would just suddenly vanish.  “You can see me?” he asked slowly, surprised.

          “Yeeeep,” I answered. “And no, I won’t help you reunite with your dead wife, or whatever it is you’re about to ask me to do,” I stated plainly.

          Let me explain to you a thing about ghosts. My power, my ability, is no super power. All mediums, or ghost-seers, know the dangers and weight that comes with the sight. Ghosts aren't supposed to exist, really. Ghosts are the remains of a human whose death is too foggy for them to move on. If the details of their demise aren’t clear, they can’t go on to the afterlife. They’re stuck on earth, forever wondering how the fuck they died. Once they find out I can talk to them, they all come flocking to me, asking for help. Tragic as it is, I’m just a teenager. I can’t save every single lost soul.

          “Wait wait wait, how can you see me? Isn't that supposed to be, uh, very impossible?” the ghost asked.

          “I’m a medium,” I don’t turn to him to talk. “I can see ghosts. It’s no big deal, it just runs in the family. Now go away, I’m doing something important.”

          “Ok, _medium_ ,” he sounded doubtful, as if he wasn't holding a full conversation with me. He seemed to purposefully ignore my request for him to go away, seeing as he walked closer. He stood next to me, looking through the photos and documents on your mothers desk.

          “Do you mind?” I asked, getting increasingly annoyed. “I’m kind of working here.” I noticed that he stood with a kind of air that dead people shouldn't be standing with: as if he somehow had everybody and everything already figured out. Obviously, that’s not true, because if he had everything figured out, he wouldn't be here.

          “Oh really? It just looks to me like you’re making a mess. You shouldn't be so sloppy with evide-” he stopped speaking, distracted. For one of the first times, I turned my head to actually look at him. I followed his gaze down to the newspaper on the desk, where the headline blared in bold about the death of the Strider detective.

          “Huh,” he says, looking at it curiously. “They printed that fast. I only died this morning,” he continued reading, and suddenly it clicked.

          “Are you... Dirk Strider?” I asked, looking at him. My gaze traveled down to his chest, where six bullet holes glowed a mellow orange.

          “The one and only,” he answered while reading. Eventually, he looked up. “Who’s asking?”

          “Roxy Lalonde,” I answered, going back to looking through the evidence. ‘ _I’m doing a really bad job of ignoring him,’_ I thought as I combed through the evidence.

          “Lalonde, as in, Rose Lalonde?” Of course. If he worked at the police station, he would know my mother.

          “Yeah,” I replied. “She’s my mom. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find her.”

          “Find her? She’s missing?”

          “Yea! So please leave me alone, so I can get to finding her!!” I tried to brush him away, but my hand just went right through him. “Oh,,, gross,” I muttered.

          He stepped away for a minute, pacing around. He walked right through some of the clutter around the room, clipping through the bed and the edge of the desk. I tried to block him out and focus on what I was doing, but I found it hard. Eventually, he stopped his pacing, turning back to me.

          “It’s obvious that I need to figure out who the Rose Killer is,” he says. “And you need to find your mom,” I was only paying half of my attention to his voice. “Our goals aren't that uncommon, we should work toge-” I got the gist of what he was about to say, and I stopped him in his tracks.

          “ _No. No no no_. I do _not_ work with ghosts. I do _not_ work with ghosts,” I said sternly.

          He rubbed his forehead, obviously annoyed by my stubbornness. “Look, kid-”

          “I’m not a kid. I’m nineteen,” I interrupted him again.

          “Ugh, Can you be quiet for two seconds?” he pleaded. When I didn't speak, he continued. “Like I was trying to say, you’re forgetting that I’m an experienced detective. I can find Rose-”

          “Experienced? You’re 24! You’re barely older than I am!”

          “And I’m also you’re only hope.”

          I furrowed my brows, angry that he was right. “Fine. You win. We can work together.”

 

 


	3. An Unlikely Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk makes a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Fall Out Boy

          “Fine. You win. We can work together,” were the words that sealed our little alliance. Saying that I wasn’t happy would be an understatement. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, doting.

          ‘ _Roxanne, what have I always told you? Stay away from ghosts. You’re much too careless to be around them, dear. Don’t go looking for trouble where you’re sure to find it. Maybe one day, I’ll teach you how to properly intera-’_ I shooed away my mother’s inward voice. My whole life, _my whole life_ , she had told me to stay far away from ghosts. She said that one day, she’d teach me what my ability truly meant. Well, she wasn’t here anymore. She couldn’t teach me anything. Still, I felt like I as breaking the biggest rule in the book.

          I’m pretty sure my mother had connections on the other side. They were probably some friends of hers who died prematurely. I think she was such a good investigator because she would get her connections to actually talk to the victims. When you can ask a victim straight out who murdered them, the entire ordeal of solving a crime becomes a whole lot simpler; then again, it wasn’t always that easy. Most victims of murder are stuck on Earth because they don’t know who killed them. So, when my mother would solve a case, she would relay the answer back to the victims, and they got to ‘move on’. Yay, happy ending for everybody.

          Dirk held his hand out to shake on the deal. I reached my own hand out, but it just went through his. I waved my hand through his and wondered if that counted as a sufficient ghost hand shake. Now that I wasn’t focusing on ignoring Dirk, I could actually focus on his appearance. He looked,, like a 24 year old. Young, tall, lean. He must’ve been quite the lady killer when he was alive. He was still in his detective’s uniform: slacks, a vest, and a badge. I assumed he died in those clothes. Six bullet holes were visible in his chest, and when I looked at them I became nauseous. Small smatters of blood decorated his uniform like coffee stains on a late night essay. His entire appearance looked, well, dead.

            “Ok, great. So, what have you got so far?” he asked, returning me to our conversation. I turned back to my mother’s desk.

            “Well, she’s got a whole lot of stuff,” I said plainly. Dirk looked at me, expecting me to go on. I looked back, giving him a blank face.

            “That’s,,,, all you have so far?” He furrowed his brows.

            “Hey, I’ve never had to do anything like this before,” I said in my own defense. “Why? Did you expect me to be some sort of Sherlock Holmes reincarnate?” I asked sarcastically.

           “No, I just expected you might have minor experience, considering you’re Rose’s daughter,” he looked back down at the clues and bit his lip. His eyes swept across the documents, and I could see the gears in his mind moving. It took him about three minutes to talk again.

          “Here,” his translucent finger came to rest upon one of the documents. “It says here that she’s got another book of evidence in her office down at the station. We’ve got to go get it.” He wasn’t wrong; it did say that. My mother had scribbled it at the bottom of one of the documents: _‘*check book at office, maybe correlation?'_. She appeared to be writing about a bit of graffiti she found. The Rose Killer’s symbol was apparently graffitied outside the town church, most likely by a local rebellious teenager. By the looks of the paper, my mother saw other relations between the graffiti and the killer.

          “Ok, that sounds vaguely like a plan, but,” I checked my watch. "It’s nine thirty at night. They’ll never let me into the station. Wait, would they even let me in during the day? I mean, is that even allowed?”

          “Oh god,” he rolled his eyes as I spoke. “Don’t act so innocent, Rolal,” he gave me a new nickname. I played with it in my head, deciding if I liked the new alibi. I came to the conclusion that it wasn't the worst, and I'd let it stand. Dirk speaks again. “You realize that the station has camera’s, right? Like, security cams? And we’ve caught you sneaking in before.” He shook his head as if he was my disapproving father. Before I could speak, he turned on his heels and sauntered _through_ the door, out of the room.

          “ _Mutha fuckin bitch ass hoe-bag ghost_ ,” I mumbled as I actually _opened_ the door and walked out. He was waiting in the hall."

          “Heard that.”

 

 


End file.
